have been asked to address the question, "Are we conservatives?" to
an institution that is a symbol of contemporary conservatism. This
fact already tells us something about the subject. I could no more
pose the question, "Are we prbgressives?" to a compar a ble
gathering of the left, for example, than !-could ask a crow'd of
citfie fis, "Are we Ahlerici6i?" T6-raise such an issue in these
contexts would be to question an identity and the foundations of a
faith. The ability to ask the question, "Are we conser v atives?"
tells us first of all that conserva,'tism is not an ideology in the
sense that liberalism or the various forms of radicalism are.
Conservatism is not an "identity politics," that is, a politics
addressed before all else to the issue of what kind o f people
embrace it. It is not a politics whose primary concern is to place
its adherents in the camp of moral humanity, and thus to confer on
them the stamp of History's approval. Because conservatism is not a
philosophy that seeks to enlist its adherent s in a historical van-
guard, it does not have a party line. It is possible for
conservatives to question virtually any position held by other
conservatives, including, evidently, the notion that they are
conservatives at all, without risking excommunicati o n, expulsion,
or even a raised eyebrow. Of course, this latitude has limits. No
one would regard as conservative, for example, someone who embraced
the levelling aspirations of contemporary liberalism or the utopian
agendas of the socialist left. Within s u ch limits, however, the
liberality of conservatism (or at least American conservatism) is a
generally under-ap@reciiie:d fact. For an ex-radical like myself to
have be- come part of the conservative community has been an
extraordinary privilege, like brea t hing a free air. In
conservatism I have encountered a community where I can engage the
issues of the day without anxiously looking over my shoulder to
assess the reaction of the politically correct. This, I can tell
you, is very different from the intelle c tual atmosphere that
prevailed on the left. Beginning as an Attitude. Although it is not
an ideological faith, American conservatism is grounded in
philosophical convictions (and among conservatives is unique in
this respect). It begins, however, the way o ther conservatisms
begin-as an attitude-and only afterward does it become a stance.
And when American conservatism solidifies into a philosophical
position, it does so from considerations that are ultimately
pragmatic (and in this is consonant with what i s traditionally
understood to be the conservative temper). This is not to deny that
conservatives themselves often claim religious principles as the
ultimate basis for their convictions. But it is not any religious
commitment that makes them conservatives. There are radicals and
liberals who have similar commitments and make similar claims. To
say that conservative attitudes derive from pragmatic
considerations is to state an obvious but important fact: What
makes conservative -principles "conservative" is that they are
rooted in. an attitude about the past, rather than in expectations
of the future.

David Horowitz is President of the Center for the Study of
Popular Culture, Studio City, California. He spoke at The Heritage
Foundation on December 15, 1992, as part of the W.H. Brady Lecture
Series on Defining Conservatism. ISSN 0272-1155. 01993 by The
Heritage Foundation.

It is this pragmatic foundation of American conservatism that
explains why it can be the com- mon ground of such diverse
viewpoints. Conse rvatives today operate from what are often
profoundly different philosophical assumptions and entertain quite
divergent expectations of the future. It is, in fact, this
indeterminacy about the future that, in my view, is the crucial
element that distingui s hes conservatism from its ideological
opponents. Indeterminacy about the future does not mean that
conservatives are indifferent to possible so- cial outcomes. They
would, of course, like to see a future- that is relatively more
benevolent and measurably m ore humane than present circumstances.
But they can only claim to appreciate those principles and to favor
those traditions and institutions that may serve as reasonable and
prudential guides-through passages that are-uncertain,-and despite
consequences t hat are unin- tended. Conservatives do not pretend
to be able to shape the social future, and particularly do not
offer plans designed to induce human beings to act in ways that are
dramatically different from how human beings have acted in the
past.

Betwe en Past and Future The first principles of conservatism,
then, are propositions about the existing social contract: about
human nature in a social context. The itions about limits, and the
imposition of y are proposi limits, and what they both make possib
l e. It is this practicality, this attention to experience and to
workable arrangements, that explains why conservatism can be
liberal and tolerant toward its ex- ponents in ways that the
progressive left cannot'. In contrast to the conservative outlook,
li b eral and radical ideologies are about desired-and therefore
determinate-futures. The first principles of the left are the
principles of politically con- structing a "better world." Such a
future must be consciously designed by enlightened intelligence. It
is thus an essential characteristic of progressivism that it
proposes a sharp break with the experience of the past, that its
visions entail a rejection of existing social contracts. "Socially
Just." Throughout the modem era, progressives have proposed a c
ontract which guarantees that all of society's members will be made
equal in their economic and social condi- tions-or at the very
least, in their starting points. Futures based on this contract are
designated 46 socially just." Liberals and radicals diff e r among
themselves about the degree of equality that might be achieved in
the name of social justice, or of the means acceptable for arriving
at such a state. (The concession involved when liberals refer to
"levelling the playing field," as opposed to lev e lling the
players, results from their attention to previous progressive
failures, for example.) But the differences between liberals'and
raidic"als are confined first to differences of degree in the
results desired, and then to the means by which these re s ults may
be obtained. The agenda of "so- cial justice," and of using the
state to enforce desired outcomes, remains the same. It is this
shared, utopian agenda that makes it appropriate to refer to both
liberalism and radicalism, generically, as ideology o f the left.
Since the ideologies of the left derive from commitments to an
imagined future, to question them is to provoke a moral, rather
than an empirical, response: "Are you for or against the future
equality of human beings?" To demur from a commitmen t to the
progressive viewpoint is thus not a failure to assess relevant
facts, but an unwillingness to embrace a liberated future. It is to
will the imperfections of the present order. In the current
political cant of the left, it is to be 64 racist, sexis t ,
classist," a defender of the status quo. That is why not only
radicals, but even those who call themselves liberals are
instinctively in- tolerant toward the conservative position. For
progressives, the future is not a maze of human uncertainties and
un intended consequences. It is a moral choice. To achieve the
socially just fu- ture requires only that enough people decide to
will it. Consequently, it is perfectly consistent for

2

progressives to consider themselves morally and intellectually
enlight ened, while dismissing their opponents as immoral,
ignorant, or (not infi-equently) insane. While the politics of the
left is derived from assumptions about the future, its partisans
are also careful to construct a history that validates their
claims. At t he outset of the Cold War, the sociologist T. H.
Marshall delivered a famous lecture on the "development of
citizenship" in the West. In it he distinguished between the civil,
political, and social dimensions of citizenship, identifying each
of the last t h ree centuries as a stage in their progress. The
revolutions of the 18th century institutionalized civil rights of
free speech and religion, and a government of laws. The 19th
century extended the rights of suffrage and the political base of
freedom, estab l ishing the equality of individuals as
participants-in the political- process that guaranteed-their civil
rights. The 20th century-then at its mid-point-was witnessing a
revolution that would extend citizen- ship rights to the social and
economic realms, b y recognizing entitlements to education, health
care, material well-being and security as basic human rights.
Ideological Umbrella. It should be obvious that this third sphere
of citizenship rights embraces the prescriptions of socialism, and
that Marshall ' s paradigm is merely a liberal formula- tion of the
agenda of the modem left. For two centuries the left has attempted
to "complete" the French Revolution by extending political and
civil freedom into the social realm in the form of
redistributionist clai m s to economic wealth. Until now,
"socialism"' has been the ideological umbrella for this project.
Modem-or should I say post-modem, or better still,
post-Communist-conservatism begins with the recognition that this
agenda and the progressive paradigm that underpins it are bankrupt.
They have been definitively refuted by the catastrophes of
socialism in the 20th century. The utopian quest for social justice
and its redistributionist agenda are implicated in those
catastrophes as root causes of the totalitar i an nightmare. To
propose a "solution" that is utopian, in other words impossible, is
to propose a solution that requires absolute coercion in order to
suc- ceed. Who wills the end, wills the means. Post-Communist
conservatism, then, begins with the princi p le that is written in
the blood of the social experiment. It was summed up by Hayek in
The Constitution ofUberty more than thir- ty years ago: "It is just
not true," he wrote, "that human beings are bom equal;... if we
treat them equally, the result must b e inequality in their actual
position;... [thus] the only way to place them in an equal position
would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and
material equality are, therefore, not only different, but in
conflict with each other." Crushi n g Individual Freedom. In other
words, the rights historically claimed in the paradigm of the left
are self-contradicting and self-defeating. The history of the
social experi- ment of the last 200 years describes the stark
implications of that contradictio n and the terrible price of those
defeats. The regime of social justice, of which the left dreams, is
a regime that by its very nature must crush individual freedom. It
is not a question of choosing the right (or avoid- ing the wrong)
political means in or d er to achieve the desired ends. The means
are contained in the ends. The leftist revolution must crush
freedom in order to achieve the social justice that it seeks. It is
unable, therefore, to achieve even diat justice. This is the
totalitarian circle tha t cannot be squared. Socialism is not bread
without freedom, it is neither freedom nor bread. The shades of the
victims in the endless cemetery of 20th century revolutions cry out
from their still fresh graves: The liberated future is a
destructive illusio n. To heed this cry is the beginning of the
con- servative point of view.

3

While opposing the destructive chimera of socialist justice,
however, conservatives should not indulge a utopianism of their
own. The conservative vision does not exclude comprom ise; nor
should it condemn every attempt, however moderate, to square the
circle of political liberty and social welfare. Conservatism does
not require that all aspects of the Welfare State be rejected in
favor of free market principles. After all, conser v atives are (or
should be) the first to recognize the intractable nature of the
human condition. The perfectly free society is as untenable as the
per- fectly just society, and for the same reason. We would have to
rip out our all-too-human hearts in order to achieve it. Some
economic redistribution may be compassionate and necessary, even
though (as Hayek has shown) it can never be just. In short, within
congervatism-there is room for, a "'liberal" argument as to how far
we need to go in following the logi c of liberty and how widely we
can extend the social safety net, or best shape the contours of a
welfare intending state. But for conservatives, it is the limits of
such en- deavors that must be recognized at the outset; the
bankruptcy and menace of the so cialist paradigm that must be
accepted and understood.

The American Founding The Hayekian paradox-the point from which
contemporary conservatism begins-is, of course, only a
reformulation of an understanding shared by the architects of the
American found- ing. Thus the incompatibility of libert@ with any
plan to eliminate inequality and difference is the essential
argument that Publius makes in Federalist #10. Nor is it an
accident, as Marxists like to say, that Federalist #10 describes
the constitutional a rrangement as a design to thwart the projects
of the left-"a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for
an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked
project." It is thus in the constitutional founding that American
conserva t ism finds its philosophical ground. American
conservatives define themselves first of all as conservers of the
constitutional framework; the philosophy of that framework informs
their outlook. On examination, the constitutional philosophy can be
seen to o r iginate in a conservative ap- preciation of limits as
the foundation of rights, of a system of ordered constraints as the
basis of agreement. (That to secure these Rights, Governments are
instituted among Men.) In the constitu- tional philosophy, the poss
i bilities of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are
attainable only through a framework of neutral restraints: in
economics, the discipline of the market; in politics, popular
consent and the rule of law. This is the formula of liberal
conservatis m : the individual constrained by a government of the
laws; government limited by negative liberties and the con- sent of
the governed. It is the formula of the constitutional founding. It
is the wisdom reaffirmed by the catastrophes of the left-of those
wh o rejected this framework as a bourgeois concept and a mass for
privilege-from the Jacobin Terror to the 20di century gulags that
Marxists built. The post-Communist left also understands the
significance of the Constitution as a bulwark of conservative pri n
ciples and freedoms. In his book, Constitutional Faith, law
professor Sanford Levinson poses the question of whether
progressives can even participate in the social contract, whether
they could "sign" the Constitution today in good faith. In order to
just i fy a half-hearted "Yes" for himself, Levinson first
depreciates the Constitution as a crystallization of durable
truths. The "anti-foundationalisf'philosophy of Richard Rorty
provides an epistomological vantage. In Levinson's view, the
constitutional fram e work is merely a "discourse," a "linguistic
system" in which virtually any social agenda can be expressed. It
is, in his words, "less a series of propositional utterances than a
commitment to taking political conversation seriously," a con-
versation, alb eit, in which anything can be said.

4

Far from exhibiting an attitude that is eccentric or extreme,
Levinson is here merely expressing the nihilistic temper of the
contemporary left. Thus, in The Future ofLiberal Revolution, just
published, Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman proposes a way of r
eading the Constitution so that a redistributionist agenda (one of
Publius's "wicked projects") can be incorporated into its text.
Extending this logic, law professor Mark Tushnet of Georgetown
argues that one can employ what he calls "constitution-talk" t o
implement a program of affirmative rights, and in- deed, the entire
socialist agenda. Finding a radical flexibility in the
constitutional text is the precondition for securing the left's
endorsement of the Constitution, because the Constitution was clea
r ly written as a conservative foundation-property as the basis of
liberty; the autonomy of 'the- individual and private enterprise as
against the tyranny of the state. "Those who are well off...,"
argues Levinson, "might well be... appreciative of the Cons t
itution's protection of so-called 'negative' liberties, that is
rights against oppressive state interference in one's everyday life
.... But what reason do persons mired in poverty have to be wildly
appreciative of negative rights when what they seek are a
ffirmative protections such as food, shelter, and clothing?...
Might he or she... declare that a Constitution lacking a strongly
affirmative Bill of Rights is not worth signing, whatever its other
strengths may be?" Thus, the outlook of post-Communist pro g
ressives establishes itself in the denial of precisely the lesson
that 20th century revolutions teach-that the principles of economic
redistribution and affirmative rights, which form the basis of the
socialist project, lead to the destruction of prosperi t y and
justice and liberty. For the conservative, the Constitution is not
a convenient discourse.- but a repository of prag- matic and
durable truths about the conditions of liberty and prosperity in a
social order. No one reading the argument of the Feder a list
Papers, which is an argument about the meaning of his- tory, can
fail to understand it. The truths embodied in the principles of the
Constitution were validated for the Founders by the history of
previously existing societies. They have been con- fir m ed in our
lifetime by the end results of the 200-year war of the left against
the philosophical and political framework of "bourgeois"
freedoms-against the idea of negative liberties and the practice of
limited government; and by the left's establishment of societies
based on its own-radi- cal principles of positive freedoms, meaning
affminative rights to food, shelter, clothing, employment, and
equality; and the catastrophes they created.

But, are we conservatives? Well, yes and no. In a famous afterword.
to The Constitution ofUberty, Hayek explained why he was not a
conservative in the European sense. "Conservatism, proper," he
wrote, "is a legitimate, probably necessary, but certainly
widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change." It therefore
ca n not "offer an alternative to the direction in which we are
moving." And that is a problem, given the dynamism of capitalist
society, the openness of the.American polity, and the ascendance of
modem liberal ideology over the last half century. I use the te r m
"modem liberal" to reflect that fact that through its cultural
dominance, the left has been able to hijack the term "liberal" for
its own anti-liberal agendas. The principles and values of the
American founding, which form the. philosop4ic basis of cont e
mporary conservatism, are, of course, those of Classical
Liberalism. The fiihers of modem conservatism-Locke, Burke,
Madison-are Classical Liberals. Far from being conservatives, they
were anti-Tory exponents of liberal principle, self-conscious
defenders and architects of the great liberal revolutions of their
time.

5

While modem radicals have failed in their efforts to expropriate
the means of material produc- tion, they have succeeded in
appropriating enough of the means of cultural production to proc
laim themselves liberals and make the label stick. These radical
wolves in sheep's clothing fall into two categories. The first and
smaller group is made up of the unreconstructed left. Whether
calling itself radical feminist, or sddbturalist, or merely p r
ogressive, its agenda remains totalitarian. The second, larger
category acknowledges the bankruptcy of the socialist left, and
makes a begrudging commitment to free markets, but still does not
want to give up the. agenda of a, social justice"-the idea tha t
government can arrive at a standard of what is just, and that the
state can implement such a standard without destroying economic and
political freedom. The liberal ascendance@'that dominates and
clouds the current horizon-is .- in fact, a popular front o f these
two groups. Their victories are visible all around us. Under the
bannerof the Great Society and welfare rights, they have
transformed the Idea of America from being a covenant to secure
liberties to being a claim to entitlement; and therefore vast l y
expanded the powers of the state and dramatically constricted the
realm of Individual freedom; eroded the private economy and stifled
Individual Initiative, so that today government accounts for more
then 40 percent of the domestic product and the produ c tive
citizen pays more than 50 percent of his or her inbbme in taxes;
subverted neutrality of the law and the very Idea of a national
Identity by race-based legislation and the concept of group rights.
Nothing, in fact, so dramatically indicates the trans f ormation of
the constitutional framework in our time than the fact that
anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish, and anti-European discrimina-
tion on behalf of blacks, Hispanics, "native Americans," and
Aleutian Islanders(!) is now a sign of liberal enlightm e nt, while
defense of the universalist covenant of the founding is now
regarded as reactionary and racist. So ingrained have the premises
of the old left become, in new liberal clothing in post-Cold War
America, that conservatives are now the counter-cultu r e. And this
is why we must not think only in conservative terms in confronting
the challenges ahead. We must think of ourselves as heirs to Locke
and Burke and Madison, who faced a similar challenge Erom the lefts
of their time, and we must proclaim with t hem: We are the
"revolutionaries" demanding a universal standard of one right, one
law, one nation for all. We are the champions of tolerance, the op-
ponents of group privilege and of communal division. We are the
proponents of a common ground that is co l or-blind,
gender-equitable"(16 both directions), and ethnically inclusive-a
government of laws that is neutral between its citizens and limited
in scope. We are the advo- cates of society as against the state,
the seekers of dramatic reduction in the burd e ns of taxation and
redress from the injustices of government intervention. We are the
defenders of the fire market against the destructive claims of the
socialist agenda. And we are conservers of the con- stitutional
covenant against the forces of modem t yranny and the totalitarian
state.